Could paying mothers more after they return to work and encouraging dads to take time off boost your firm's productivity and profits?
Small and medium-sized businesses often struggle to balance their own needs with giving parents the flexibility they need.
And with most childcare duties still falling to mothers, this can often feed through to women taking lesser roles in order to give them breathing space.
That in turn can lead on to perpetuating gender inequality, both in terms of progression and pay. But could being more flexible with parents and channelling energy into improving mother's pay after they return to work actually boost productivity and profits?
We take a look with the help of cultural insight expert Annie Auerbach.
Jodie Whittaker was appointed as the first ever female Dr Who - just before the BBC ended up in a row about gender equality
For decades, the concept of equality for both men and women in the workplace has focused on visibility, the number of women in senior roles and the gender pay gap.
But until now female board members have largely been talked about in the context of FTSE 100 companies - something most ordinary folk tend not to think about much.
Yet, this is an issue that runs right through British business and affects our small and medium-sized firms too.
And improving the lot of women and mothers in the workplace - and helping out dads too - could actually boost productivity and profits, says one expert.
Annie Auerbach, co-founder of cultural insight agency Starling, says: 'For both fathers and mothers, this would mean that occasional school pick-ups, and attending school plays, sports days and parents’ evenings would be more possible, all of which might only amount to a few hours a month, but would give an incredible amount of satisfaction and fulfilment.'
And those more satisfied and fulfilled workers will put in better work, she says, potentially boosting productivity - something seen as the key to growth and profits.
Recently, the issue of gender and pay has finally hit the headlines in a way that provides tangible evidence that inequality exists, but once you know the scale of the problem how do you address it?
The BBC published figures revealing its seven top earning stars were all men, as were 62 of the 96 on the list, that there were no female names in any category above £500,000 and that half of all the women in the list lagged in the lowest band.
It follows government legislation brought in this year mandating that any organisation that has 250 or more employees must publish and report specific figures about their gender pay gap.
The revelations at the BBC spurred a public outcry over pay inequality, despite that being a good week for women at the top, with Jodie Whittaker named the first ever female Dr Who and the hugely successful Carolyn McCall appointed to the helm of media giant ITV.
The problem is that while high profile appointments like those catch attention, they can also be used to mask continuing underlying inequality that doesn't make the public eye.
Visibility in the workplace, meanwhile, continues to focus on parental leave without much in the way of positive suggestions for how we change any unconscious bias that exists - if we're honest with ourselves, most of us still lazily believe that mothers who take time out from work and come back to fewer hours should therefore earn lower pay.
But with the BBC publishing the salaries of some of the country's most familiar faces - the gender pay gap and its inherent unfairness has been suddenly made real in a way that cannot be ignored.
So what do we do to change things?
Closing the gender pay gap where all other things are equal should be easy - but how do you measure all other things being equal?
Is it time put in or productivity put out?
Annie Auerbach, co-founder of Starling - a cultural insight agency that helps businesses to understand changing culture, believes firms need a radical rethink on how people work if productivity is going to improve.
We asked her to tell This is Money why she thinks things need to change and what change might look like.
Annie Auerbach: Firms need a radical rethink on how people work
Why do firms assess employees on their input in hours and face time rather than output?
AA: There’s been a culture of presentee-ism in more traditional industries: getting in before the boss arrives and leaving after the boss leaves.
There is still a sense that presence in the workplace and the length of your working day is a badge of honour and demonstrates commitment and drives productivity.
Amelia Torode, former chief strategy officer of TBWA, London, writes of the advertising industry: 'All too often, it seems that to succeed… you have to bleed for your agency. If you’re not prepared to do that, then someone else coming up the ranks will. Investment bank-style hours become an (unpaid) expectation rather than a personal choice.'
The danger of this as a culture is that everybody ends up working longer hours - that are not necessarily more productive hours - and at the risk of burn out. In a recent report, the TUC found that stress is the top health and safety concern in UK workplaces.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, stated: ‘Stress is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Pressures of long working hours and low job security are being felt in workplaces across the UK.’
What is an alternative way to approach flexible working?
AA: An alternative way to approach flexible working is to measure effectiveness in terms of each individual’s output rather than their input.
Focusing on output rather than input could liberate us from a culture of presentee-ism and make for a new way of working which is about quality and effective short sprints rather than the marathon of long hours.
Today we have the technology to help us work both flexibly AND collectively, which means we can fit intense amounts of work into pockets of time and share that in real time with our colleagues.
Focusing on output allows each individual to deliver what they need to, when they need to, but flexibly in their own time, and it can fit around other commitments.
For both fathers and mothers, this would mean that occasional school pick-ups, and attending school plays, sports days and parents’ evenings would be more possible, all of which might only amount to a few hours a month, but would give an incredible amount of satisfaction and fulfilment.
It’s also a shift in terms of mindset: no longer would they have to leave their parenthood at the threshold of their workplace, it would be a step towards acknowledging it or even championing it.
But this is not just about parents. Any of us who might have outside commitments like looking after an older parent, charitable endeavours, or simply other passions outside of work might relish this approach.
How could you measure performance? And assess reward?
AA: Job descriptions have a set of deliverables and these could be seen in terms of ‘what we bring to the business’ instead of hours inputted. These deliverables can be measured and rewarded, but don’t need to be linked to rigid working hours.
Your performance could be measured by your ability to do great work and deliver it on time, but it could be up to you when and how you do the work. This approach is about respecting the diverse talents of the workforce, getting the best out of them in whichever way works best for them and it is about a grown-up relationship with employees based on the trust that they will deliver.
What does flexible working mean to you in today’s world?
AA: Flexible working in today’s world is not just about working well in a more inclusive environment but it is also vital for the pipeline of future talent. Young people are likely to jump jobs four times in their first decade out of college. They also want to find working cultures that align with their ethics and sense of purpose.
Those businesses that champion presentee-ism and productivity at the expense of culture and purpose are not going to attract the best talent.
Is it really helpful to continue to view gender equality in terms of fairness for women only?
AA: The most urgent need is to address the gender pay gap, which at current rates won’t close until 2069, according to Deloitte.
Clearly there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of the numbers of women in leadership positions.
Carolyn McCall has been appointed ITV's chief executive following her success at EasyJet
In 2015, women made up only 14 per cent of executive committees in the financial sector. And this is despite the fact we know female chief executives’ overall performances are higher than their male counterparts’ when it comes to stock market returns.
However, we should also think more broadly.
When there is equality in the workplace it’s better for women AND men.
We should be thinking about de-stigmatising shared parental leave for men as well. There’s a generation of young fathers out there who are looking for flexibility, and want their fatherhood to be accepted in the workplace.
Yet more than a third of 1,000 American male respondents in a recent Deloitte survey say that taking paternity leave would ‘jeopardise their position’ at work.
I’m working with the initiative Dads4Daughters that simultaneously seeks to enlist fathers in the achievement of gender equality in the workplace while celebrating their roles as working fathers.
One of their main objectives is greater uptake of shared parental leave. The more men who take up shared parental leave, the more women can flourish in the workplace too.
What would gender equality look like in your mind – both for mums and dads?
AA: At the moment, being a parent – for both genders - is seen as an Achilles heel in the workplace. We need to flip this and make parenting an asset in the workplace.
Too often working fathers and mothers are made to apologise for the fact they are parents. They are seen as the ones who leave early, the flaky ones, the uncommitted, but we need to flip this entire discourse and see that the traits that are developed as parents are also incredibly powerful in the workplace.
Parents are negotiators, nurturers of creativity, they are tolerant, they are resilient, they have empathy.
All of these are leadership traits of the future. No longer will ‘command and control’ leadership tactics hold sway - in a business world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, it will be the leaders with emotional intelligence who will thrive.
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